Thursday, May 29, 2014

Salut Galarneau! - Un livre et son temps

Jacques Godbout: Salut Galarneau! Éditions du Seuil, 1967, 158 pages



            Salut Galarneau! est une sorte de conte de fée québécoise. Le nom du héros, François Galarneau, signifie, en Québécois, le soleil - le bon soleil qui réchauffe nos jours et fait pousser les arbres du forêt et la végétation vivrière des champs. François est scion d'une famille populaire - et plutôt farfelue - devenue bourgeoise. Frère Jacques est athée invétéré - donc, par définition, "sophistiqué", "moderne" - et écrivain pour Radio Canada. François est le frère - des quatre - défaillant. Il vend des hot-dogs (saucisses américaines servies sur pain avec condiments) au comptoir d'un autobus désaffecté converti en cuisine. Comme il le dit souvent: il n'a pas la tête pour les livres..

           En son vingt-cinquième année, sa femme Marise, le trompe et le quitte pour frère Jacques. François s'emmure en faisant élever des murs de blocs de ciment autour de sa maison. C'est évidemment un original..

           Cet étrange roman frôle le surréalisme sans, pourtant, jamais y arriver: la mémoire, la rêverie et le vécu s'y mêlent. Pour "l'huberlu" Galarneau, on sent qu'aucune de ces catégoire d'expérience l'emporte sur les autres. À la fin, à son 26e anniversaire, François se prépare à sortir de son prison / refuge / asile pour conter son histoire au monde par la parole écrite.

           Quarante-sept ans écoulé dépuis sa publication, il est tentant de "psychanalyser" le texte, d'y trouver le "portrait de son temps". C'est une voie légitime: Galarneau lui-même ne justifie pas son emmurement, son geste reste sans commentaire.

          Le héros est sans doute "symbole". Mais de qui? Et pourquoi? L'auteur projette sa volonté de s'imposer comme écrivain, comme intellectuel? Veut-il "représenter" la société québécoise en pleine mutation libératirice des années 60? Ces années-là le Québec trouvait sa propre voix nationale, commençait à valuer sa propre création culturelle et a s'affirmer comme puissance et présence sur les scènes politiques canadiennes et internationales.

          J'imagine Jacques Godbout, jeune intellectuel, écrivait cette fable comme un acte ou rite magique (dans le sens freudien) à fin d'hausser sa confiance en soi. Il voulait s'affirmer - voire se trouver - dans son rôle choisi d'intellectuel québécois engagé. En ce sens, Galarneau nous offre un "portrait robot" de l'homme - surtout l'homme intellectuel - contemporain urbain avec ses angoises, ses incertitudes, ses faiblesses avouées, sa quête d'"authenticité", d'amour, d'un sens à la vie. On voit dans ce texte aussi le désaroi de L'Occident, sa perte de repères, son flottement, son vide intérieur.

En épigraphe:

"Il fallut que Colomb partît avec des fous pour décrovrir l'Amérique. Et voyez comme cette folie a pris corps, et duré" - André Bréton

          Auteur Godbout, en bon gauchiste des années 60, s'en prend à la superficialité et la vacuité de la "culture" de consommation nord-américaine. Ce refus de culture donne au texte un ton "prophétique" pour les lecteurs d'aujourd'hui qui vivent la décomposition accélérée du monde capitaliste néolibérale: changements climatiques, épuisement des ressources, surpopulation, pauperisme mondial, intégrismes religieux et racials..

         En dépit des lectures ironiques que nous pouvons le prêter - et auxquelles il se prête volontiers - Salut Galarneau! est un livre de jeunesse, plein d'espoir et de fougue. Il dégage la folie, la libérté des années 60 et de la "contreculture" québécoise. C'est le livre d'un homme intellectuel, rélativement jeune et idéaliste, qui veut s'affirmer dans sa société tout en oeuvrant pour un meilleur monde. Cette impression se retrouvait dans une entrevue radio-diffusée récemment. Jacques Godbout, un souverainiste - qui veut faire une République du Québec - s'adressait au changements politiques survenus au Québec ces dernières décennies. J'avais l'impression qu'à l'âge de 80 ans, il est un peu déboussolé par ce monde électronique nous habitons aujourd'hui. Il sait plus où va le projet d'une République Québécoise. Les jeunes, ils se définissent comme Québécoise - oui - mais le centre de leur monde, c'est le monde entier, le monde interconnecté par l'internet à la vitesse de la lumière. Nous jeunes, dit-il, sont à la fois québécoise ET cosmopolite mais dans un sens que Godbout ne comprends plus. Pour lui, une Répulique Qubécoise indépendante serait cosmopolite (les gauchistes souverainistes de sa génération voulaient ouvrir le Québec au monde). Or, les jeunes sont devenus cosmopolites mais L'Indépendance politique a fortement reculé comme motif chez eux. Godbout a fini l'entrevue en affirmant, sur un ton moins assuré que celui de Salut Galarneau!, l'incertitude du monde.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Wacky weather lately? Suck it up, more's coming...



Abbreviations used:

GW - global warming

           The jet streams are four high speed wind currents circulating the globe at high altitude. They are important because they act like conveyor belts moving masses of air at lower altitude around, thereby creating our weather. Persistent - recurrent - jet stream patterns occur on a seasonal (annual) basis and form the "infrastructure" of the various climatic zones around the world. Persistent jet stream patterns have blessed humanity with the recurrent - hence predictable - weather patterns upon which traditional agricultural systems have been based. The Monsoons of Asia, Africa and South America are cases in point.

           One of the big - and difficult to estimate - risks posed by global warming (GW) is the modification of traditional jet stream patterns. Modified jet stream patterns will modify traditional weather patterns thereby disrupting customary agricultural patterns established for centuries, in not millennia. Such weather-induced food insecurity is, potentially, a very dangerous agent of geopolitical destabilization, something an overpopulated, strife-torn planet possessing nuclear weapons does not need.. really does not need..

          In reality, GW is not a uniform process. For a number of reasons, the polar regions warm faster than the tropics. This phenomenon has already been well documented:

zonal temp changes; 1979 - 2014

           The upper graph shows a clear trend toward rising temperatures in northern regions of the Northern Hemisphere. A smaller rising trend line is seen in the bottom graph (Southern Hemisphere polar regions). Little overall rise in the tropics is seen yet (middle graph).

           Decreasing the temperature difference between the poles and the equator leads to a weakening (and more erratic) jet stream pattern. This is because pole / equator temperature differences drive the jet streams (this is where their energy comes from, like the positive and negative poles of a battery). Weakening jet streams become more variable in their structure and movement which in turn leads to erratic wacky weather (such as we have been experiencing in the Northern Hemisphere lately).

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream

           Everything you wanted to know about GW and jet steam modification (but were afraid to ask):

11 minute video: basic science 

          So where does all this leave us? Well, it leaves us, me think, in a very vulnerable position for several reasons.

- karmic payback: what goes round, comes round. We are now facing the "karmic debt" of centuries of unsustainable economic "development" (based on non-renewable resources and, most egregiously, on non-renewable energy sources. Dependance on non-renewable energy is dangerous - not to mention insane and suicidal - because, as for any living organism, energy is ultimately what drives any human society, hunter gatherer or "post-modern", "post-industrial" cultures..)

- increased vulnerability. As peak oil is demonstrating, non-renewable resources run out.. duh.. (Actually, the cheap stuff gets extracted and burned. What is left may be voluminous but is unexploitable because it is either inaccessable with current technology or is prohibitively expensive to explore, mine, transport, process and re-transport the finished products. In reality, humanity has been on one hell of a binge for a few centuries of cheap fossil energy. But all binges end - with a hangover proportionate to the binge.. "I woke up sick as a dog. Vomit, vomit, vomit.. I was scared I was going to die! And then it just went on and on and on. Then I really got scared I wasn't going to die." Ah, yes! Our university years, don't we cherish them..)
        Increased vulnerability to GW arises from a climate which is 1- different from the one we built our infrastructure to withstand and 2- inherently more variable, chaotic. Overpopulation and increased non-renewable prices increase our vulnerability.  
        Technically speaking, their are reasons for arguing that our earth is already overpopulated. This means that climate and economic refugees have few and fewer and few places to escape to - observe the pressures caused in neighboring countries by refugees fleeing conflict in Syria. 4,000 years ago, much of the earth was virgin territory. Now it's standing room only. Climate adaptation measures - seawalls, displacing population, building bearms (earth walls), reforestation, etc - require energy but it is exactly (cheap) energy (and non-renewable resources like metals) that future generations will lack. They will have reduced capability to adapt to the future climate change we have bequeathed them (I sometimes wonder: will people 500 years from now curse us and spit on the ground when they speak of us, living today?)

- chain reaction effects. A falling domino tips the next one in line. Such cascading breakdowns threaten to greatly amplify the (relatively small) effects of GW. Consider: a change in monsoon regimes could lead to starvation in Asia which could lead to geopolitical destabilization (think of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York city. Now amplify that a factor of 10 or so..) See, for example, the rather scary - but realistic - projected effects of a modest 2 C (about 4 degree Fahrenheit) rise in global temperature during this century:

overheated - book review 

              "Blowback": the unintended - generally negative - consequences of an action or policy.

               Some of the Known Unknowns:

http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/warm-winds-gather-to-invade-the-arctic-summer-sea-ice-melt-and-the-storms-of-2014/ 

                and the Unknown Unknowns (the increased variability of jet stream patterns on an annual basis. In North America, our last few winters are crap shoots - a dice game)

serbian floods spring 2014 

 http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/20-heartbreaking-photos-of-the-deadly-balkans-floods

                These "unprecedented" floods themselves have followed closely on the heels of a pretty hairy winter:

slovenian ice storm winter 2013 / 14 

                 "They" say a picture is worth a thousand words..
 

slovenian ice storm photos 2014

http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-flooding-in-serbia-and-bosnia-2014-5

      

Friday, May 9, 2014

Canada: the new face of authoritarianism?

          Stephen Harper has never projected a Mr Nice Guy image.

          To reveal my own biases, I find him pompous, stiff, ideologically rigid and biased, (silently) arrogant, petulant when opposed, a bit "full of himself". Except for ideological rigidity and bias, none of these qualities necessarily make for a bad politician. It is even arguable that a bit of chutzpah sometimes helps in his job.. (Consider another field, music. Richard Wagner wrote great music but that didn't prevent him from being a racist jerk..)

          Harper's election, it must be admitted, marked a new style (and to a lesser degree a new orientation) in Canadian federal politics, one based on the gritty, dirty, below-the-belt American neoconservative / New Right style. 

http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/angry-white-men/

(note: this article is from the conservative Macleans magazine, so this is how the Center and moderate Right see things - not just us flamin' Lefties. My major disagreement with the author might be about the chances of the "dinosaurs" going extinct anytime soon. I personally don't think they have hit their full stride yet. We ain't seen nothing yet..)

           Harper's gritty, mean-spirited populism shows in several areas, which we have treated in our articles the last few years. Primary among these:

1- critical, negative, demeaning attitude toward the media. Many journalists have complained about the chill and the Stalinoid control of the media (ironically, the Harperites like to beat up on Communist countries and parade about in the robes democracy, liberty and "individualism").

http://voices-voix.ca/en/issues/transparency/media


2- the muzzling of science when it does not accord with neoconservative "Free Market" ideology. This is especially obvious on issues relating to the environment and Albertan Tarsand exploitation.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/federal-scientists-closely-monitored-during-polar-conference-1.1248559 

Talk about a Stalinoid time warp: beam me up, Scotty, UP! FAST!

http://www.terry.ubc.ca/2014/02/19/is-the-canadian-government-censoring-its-scientists/

Kafka would have loved this..

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/03/experimental-lakes-areas-curious-episode.html

A true national tragedy this one. F'ng obscene: deliberate destruction of World Class science - philistines!

Update: a happy ending, for a change (you don't see many when it comes to environmental issues). There are some good folks and forward looking institutions out there. The Experimental Lakes Area project and infrastructure were saved in the nick of time.

http://saveela.org

3- The Nadon affair. After the supreme court refused a Harper nominee for the bench, Stephen went for the jugular.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/05/05/andrew-coyne-pmo-has-created-another-needless-controversy-by-picking-fight-with-canadas-top-judge/

           Again, we choose the conservative Maclean's magazine, to avoid the argument of excessive ideological bias on our part. Andrew Coyne even seems a bit worried about Harper's mental health. Thinking conservatives seem to be having the doubts about the drift of the Harper government as the following comment from a reader suggests:

"Edmund Burke believed a conservative was someone who respected the accumulated wisdom within existing institutions and defended them from radical assault.
Some conservative Harper is."